Dylcia Noemi Pagan

In criticizing President Clinton's decision to release the Puerto Rican prisoners, the conservative U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee also categorized Pagan as a "Puerto Rican Nationalist", echoing a recent Newsweek article. In 2006, the United Nations called for the release of the remaining Puerto Rican political prisoners in United States prisons.

In 2002, Latino Legislative Somos el Futuro conference awarded Pagan the Lifetime Achievement Award. Her archives are at Hunter College in New York and the University of Puerto Rico. She currently lives in Puerto Rico and is only allowed to travel twice a year as a condition of her parole.

For many years, numerous national and international organizations criticized Pagan's incarceration categorizing it as political imprisonment. Dylcia Noemi was finally released from prison on September 10, 1999, after President Bill Clinton extended her clemency. Clinton cited Rev. Desmond Tutu and former President Jimmy Carter as having been influential on his decision to grant Pagan the clemency offer. Cases involving the release of other Puerto Rican Nationalist prisoners have also been categorized as cases of political prisoners, with some being more vocal than others.

Dylcia Noemi Pagan (born 1946) was a Puerto Rican member of the FALN (a group which fought for Puerto Rican independence during the 1970s) who received a sentence of 55 years for seditious conspiracy and other charges. She was sentenced on February 18, 1981, and incarcerated in a U.S. federal prison. However, she was released early from prison, after President Bill Clinton extended a clemency offer to her on September 7, 1999.

Pagan was arrested in 1980 and charged with seditious conspiracy and related charges and sentenced to 63 years. When she was arrested, her young child, whose safety she feared for, was hidden from the government. In the prison she developed educational and cultural programs for the other inmates, taught aerobics, directed theatrical performances, and organized carnivals for Children's Day.

Pagan and 11 others were arrested on April 4, 1980, in Evanston, Illinois. They had been linked to more than 100 bombings or attempted bombings since 1974 in their attempt to achieve independence for Puerto Rico. At their trial proceedings, some of the arrested declared their status as prisoners of war, and refused to participate in the proceedings.

Dylcia Noemi Pagan was born in New York City in 1946. At an early age she became involved in the civil rights movement, participating in voter registration drives and ran as a Democratic candidate in Shirley Chrisholm's campaign. As a student at Brooklyn College she helped organize the Puerto Rican Student Union which resulted in the formulation of a student-controlled Puerto Rican Studies Department. By the early 1970s, she began a career as a TV producer and writer developing investigative documentaries and children's programs at NBC, ABC, CBS, and PBS. She worked with the Puerto Rican Media and Education Council, which filed a series of lawsuits against the major television stations which facilitated the local public affairs programming that still exists today. She also worked as the English editor of the bilingual daily, El Tiempo.